Andrea Brugnoni

Eclectic and Metropolitan

Entrance. An instant is all it takes to enter his world, his home. That fraction of a second necessary to frame, focus and shoot a Polaroid photo: to capture the image of anyone crossing his threshold. Thousands of photographs, to testify to the friends that come and go, like the flow of time itself.

First sign of creativity. Aged 14. Andrea chooses the boxing glove armchair as a gift. Since then, this object has accompanied him everywhere like Linus’s blanket, a classic of the sentimental variety, in his design-inflected home. That’s the way it is in the life of Andrea Brugnoni, an eclectic interpreter of the key word – selection –the real secret of style. Selection is what he does publicly in his role as general manager of the Promenade du Port: a mix of fashion, art, design and food which, since 2008, has animated the pedestrian precinct of Porto Cervo and shopping on the Costa Smeralda. It is to Brugnoni that we owe this full immersion in design objects of exquisite refinement.

Private selection. With just as much liberty and assertiveness, it is deployed in Andrea’s Milanese apartment, of which very little is actually Milanese. Filtered by a cosmopolitan taste, it often recalls London-style interiors: dark colours such as blue for the bedroom and black in the kitchen, rooms with a frequent presence of leather and hide and an eccentric flavour deriving from personal traits: wherever you look, a surprise, a pièce de résistance, inevitably and artfully “out of place”. And besides: computer, Ipod and Ipad always switched on.

Never without. Rock music and sunglasses.Never with. Business cards, always left behind.Passion. Sardinia out of season. Craze. Vintage Vespas. (Is it just a coincidence they are on sale on the Promenade?)

Travel. Hand luggage. Inside, everything cleverly rolled up and then scientifically hung up in the shower on arrival. Six/seven Ipods distributed between pockets and suitcase.

Distinctive signs. 1 . Suits strictly tailor-made – enlivened by sneakers or colourful gommino shoes. Otherwise. Torn blue jeans, jackets made to measure, loafers with buckle trim. 2 . Newspaper read from back to front, typical of a converted left-hander. 3 . The craze for tattoos, current number: 42. 4 . Pashminas around his neck, always two at a time.